The weather couldn’t be any better for the first few days of the trek. We had the pleasure of clear skies and strong sunshine, accompanied by a cool, refreshing breeze. I wore shorts for the first two days and couldn’t quite believe that I was above 2000 metres. Sun cream was needed to protect ourselves from the harmful rays, especially now we were over a mile closer to the sun. This wasn’t how I imagined trekking in the Himalaya. Pine trees covered the hills. A fast-flowing river cut through the valley. It reminded me of the Canadian Rockies, with its sweeping valleys and tree covered hills. Dolpa has a vast array of landscapes. With each turn of the valley, you are presented with a new magnificent sight. Rickety bridges cross the valley often. I was surrounded by snow topped peaks, towering to up to 7000 metres. The beauty is almost too pure to describe.

Just another perfect landscape in the Dolpa region.

These first few days trekking were relatively easy. We followed a track that was an old road and didn’t climb a great deal. Following the river valley was brilliant. There is something pure about following a river that never fails to put a smile on my face. Knowing that you have food and water close at hand and the refreshing lure of a river swim is reassuring.

Nothing beats a river swim

I am a sucker for a river swim. For the first 6 days, I had a swim every day. Only once we started getting high up into the snow line did I take a break from my daily dips. The water was always ice cold. It was also unbelievably fresh. Especially at the higher altitudes, the freshness and coldness were strongly correlated. I got pretty good at swimming in these ice cold waters.

I’ve read that there are benefits to a daily exposure to ice-cold water. Some of the health benefits can be almost unbelievable. If you want to read about cold exposure and its benefits, check out the Wim Hof method.

No need to bring a selfie stick. Instead, I attached the GoPro to a walking pole.

In a remote place

The last vehicle we saw for almost 2 weeks.

Civilisation was left behind the moment I left the town of Juphal. I didn’t see a motor vehicle for 13 days (other than an emergency helicopter). This was a welcome break from the world as we knew it. My mobile phone lost its signal fairly quickly. I didn’t even attempt to connect to the internet as it was pointless. There was no more wifi cafes or data roaming. Instead of instantly turning to our mobile devices for entertainment or relief from boredom, we would (heaven forbid!) talk to each other. If we wanted some space, we would read. I got through 7 books throughout the expedition. This is more books than I have read throughout the rest of 2017 so far.

I never really considered it before I departed, but this expedition was a welcome break from the connected, Facebook-Twitter-Instagram-WhatsApp world that we live in. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy using social media. But I enjoyed not using it more. Social media has its benefits. I can connect to old friends and even make new ones with a few swipes of a screen. It can be entertaining, inspiring and engaging but it shouldn’t control our lives. Most young people have never lived without it (now I’m starting to sound like an old man!). I see them in train stations and shopping centres, glued to their screens. Swiping through what will be mostly irrelevant social feeds of cat videos and their friends flipping water bottles.

The people I met in Dolpa don’t have facebook. They don’t have an Instagram account. Hell, if they did I’m sure they would be flooded with followers as they live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. What they do have though is a strong sense of community. On evenings, families gather in one room with a fire burning in the centre. They all help to prepare the meal. Be it collecting fuel for the fire, preparing chia (tea) or cooking the dhal bhat (rice and lentils). Animals roam free in the villages. Children learn how to handle pack animals, start fires and look after themselves at an early age. They are more street wise than any wannabe gangsters on the streets of our British cities.

Illness

There were a couple of moments when I realised how remote we actually were. The first came when an elderly lady asked our guide for some eye drops. Her eyes looked pretty sore and she could hardly open them. I doubt eye drops would have actually solved the problem. Only provided a short, welcome relief. Our guide stopped, asked the woman to sit and administered the drops. I asked if there was a local hospital and was told there was one in the next village but there was no doctor.

In the UK we moan about the NHS without realising how lucky we actually are. Yes, there are plenty of issues and problems with healthcare in the UK, but when compared to rural Nepal it pales into insignificance.

The Nepal Department of Health Services reported in 2015 that a child born in Kathmandu has 82 years of average life expectancy whereas a child born in the remote district of Jumla has only 36 years. This is crazy but having seen how remote these villages are it is not hard to imagine.

Another stat – according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) – for every 10,000 people, there is only one doctor in Nepal. The WHO state that there should be a provision of 15 doctors for every 10,000 people.

I think we should count ourselves lucky that in the UK we have some of the best healthcare in the world and we should strive to help those that are less fortunate than ourselves. This could mean helping in a number of different ways, be it charity work, donating or offering your skills and expertise.

Meeting the only other foreigner of the expedition

During the 13 days in the Dolpa region, I only met one other foreigner. His name was Alex Conty and he is walking 1700km – the length of the Himalaya in Nepal – in an attempt to raise £100,000 for children affected by autism in Nepal and the UK. Even more impressive is that he is attempting the feat alone with minimal support from porters and guides.

Alex on the left talking to Mike, one of the members of our expedition.

Alex was just past half-way when I saw him. He seemed in great spirits considering how far he had already walked. His guide had to be evacuated from the mountains just as we met him as he was coughing up blood. This shows how difficult walking the length of Nepal can be. It was strange to meet a Westerner in such a remote spot in the Himalaya. Even though I had been away from civilisation for such a shorter period of time than Alex, we still had a lot in common. It was nice to share our stories and hear about his experience so far.

Dolpa is one of the most remote regions of the Himalaya. Only open to foreigners from 1989, it is far away from the standard tourist routes in Nepal. Throughout the expedition, I was stunned by the beauty of the mountains, the kindness of the local people and the amount of wildlife thriving in this often arid and dusty landscape.

This is the first of a series of posts about my almost month-long expedition to the Himalaya in Nepal. There will be tips and advice for anyone that is planning to visit the Dolpa region or any other part of the Himalaya.

All of the photos are taken by me using either a GoPro 4 or a small Nikon 1 compact camera.

This expedition was organised by the Army Mountaineering Associationto celebrate its 60th anniversary. A total of 24 of us were selected and split into two teams: a climbing team and a trekking team. As I have little climbing experience, I was selected for the trekking team.

Route and Stats

Below is a detailed GPS track of the route that I took along with the GPS coordinates for each campsite. Here are some quick stats of the final route:

Distance: 114.1 miles

Minimum elevation: 6,581 feet (2,005 metres)

Maximum elevation: 17,070 feet (5,202 metres)

Total climb: 37,132 feet (11,317 metres)

Total descent: 35,868 feet (10,932 metres)

Kathmandu

The crazy streets of Kathmandu.

After spending 2 days in the UK as a group – organising kit and receiving cultural and medical briefs, we were finally on the way to Nepal. After a short stop in New Dehli, we finally landed in Kathmandu and could get some well-needed rest. Some of the group planned to do some last minute kit shopping before heading off to the mountains.

I didn’t feel the need to buy any kit. The Army had issued us with all of the latest gear and it was pretty amazing. Mountain Equipment sleeping bags, jackets and trousers, fancy Thermarest roll mats, a Rab down jacket and more. It’s by far the best kit I have ever been issued by the Army. It is a long way from my early days of leather gloves that ruined once wet, for warmth a ‘Norwegian’ jumper and the good old leather combat highs that took about a year to break in.

Kit laid out in the UK prior to flying.

Swayambhu Stupa or ‘Monkey Temple’

For some cultural emersion, I decided to visit the Swayambhu Stupa or ‘Monkey Temple’. According to Wikipedia, “It is probably the most sacred site among Buddhist pilgrimage sites. For Tibetans and followers of Tibetan Buddhism, it is second only to Boudha.” I thought the site was really interesting. As soon as I entered, there were women burning incense and praying to statues of Buddha. They were also having a communal feast. This was one of the first of many instances of increased sense of community in Nepal when compared to the UK. This turned out to be a common theme throughout the adventure.

On the way up to the top of the Stupa (wiki again, “is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics”), there was a large group of people gathered in a circle. I could hear clapping and cheering from a distance so I went to investigate. It was like an impromptu scene from a musical. The girls were all on one side and the men were on the other. At random, a local police officer would grab one of the men and throw him into the middle. The peer pressure of the clapping eventually got him to dance and sometimes one of the girls would join in and show him how it is done. Personally, I think this is a great use of police resources. Genuinely! Everybody seemed to be having lots of fun which in turn means there should be less crime. I’m sure that logic makes sense…. this could catch on in the UK.

Here you can see the police officer stood up just to the left of the dancer.

The Stupa is surrounded by holy monkeys. Again straight from Wikipedia, “They are holy because Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom and learning, was raising the hill which the Swayambhu Stupa stands on. He was supposed to leave his hair short but he made it grow long and head lice grew. It is said that the head lice transformed into these monkeys.” I don’t really understand most of this either and it sounds a bit crazy to me. Either way, there are loads of monkeys here causing trouble.

They are extremely used to being surrounded by tourists and use this to their advantage to get food. I was holding onto a bottle of Fanta that I had just bought from a small shop. It was a really hot day so I was very much looking forward to the refreshing relief that the drink would offer. One of the monkeys must have recognised the delicious orange goodness in the bottle and had decided that it too wanted the Fanta all for itself. Without even a please or thank you, the monkey leapt, grabbed the bottle (which is in my hand) and tried to snatch it away. Unluckily for this little mite, I had a vice grip on the bottle of fizzy carbonated sugar and thwarted the thieving monkey’s attempt. I received a kick in the stomach from the monkey before it scarpered off. A suspicious American couple were mysteriously filming the whole incident. My conclusion. The Americans must have tipped the monkey off and set the whole ambush up.

Lesson: beware of the holy monkeys and be even more aware of suspicious looking Americans!

Here is the opportunist thief.

Crazy Flight

This was one of the best journeys I’ve had in an aircraft since my days as a young air cadet when I got to fly in a Tucano over East Yorkshire.

All 12 of us climbed onto a tiny aircraft with only 15 seats (two for the pilots and one for the stewardess). Once the propellers started, you had to shout at full blast to be heard by anyone. This made the safety brief rather interesting.

We left the town of Nepalgunj on the Indian border (150 metres above sea level) and set off to our destination of Juphal (2,175 metres above sea level). It was only a short flight but almost immediately I could smell the tangy, pungent smell of somebody’s vomit. It was dribbling its way from the rear of the plane, under the seats and all the way to the front. Needless to say, it wasn’t a gentle flight. The aircraft winded its way through mountain passes before making a hard bank to the left at what felt ridiculously close to the towering mountainside. The expert pilot, wearing standard issue aviators and enough duty-free aftershave to drown out the smell of the puke, levelled the aircraft and started to make his landing.

Relief!

We had not joined the list of crashed aircraft that we saw littered at the bottom of the steep drop before the dust covered runway. This was a great way to start a trekking adventure. Stepping off the plane, we were surrounded by snow-topped mountains, lush green valleys and the most remote villages I have ever seen.

Good work from ‘Pete the Pilot’, navigating his way through the mountains.

Juphal

Juphal is a fairly large village by Dolpa standards. I imagine this is due to its proximity to the airstrip. It sits high on the side of a mountain and has stunning views.

I wonder if this shop sells any free range eggs?

Upon landing, we were taken through the village to a community centre. Walking through our first Nepalese village was an experience that brought all of my senses to life. Around each corner of the tight, dusty streets were free roaming goats, chickens and donkeys. The small, stone built buildings were filled with smoke from the fires that cooked food. Piles of dried Ox dung were being thrown onto the fires as fuel. It was like going back in time. Children wearing their smartest clothes raced past us with happy faces on their way to school.

I was surprised to see that some of the buildings had small solar panels and even satellite dishes. The mixture of tradition and new technology in Juphal.

Escaping the pollution of Kathmandu and the hectic life that a city breeds, was a welcome relief.

Once we had eaten some Dal Bhat (steamed rice with lentil soup), we were ready to start the trek. Over a 100 miles and lots of climbing awaited. I was excited and couldn’t wait to get going.

This is the first part of my adventure in Nepal. In the meantime, please subscribe to my mailing list if you would like to receive updates of when the next parts from the expedition are released.